Mars Heat (Mars Adventure Romance Series (MARS) Book 3)

by Jennifer Willis

  Her own offering—a watery, gelatinous combination of powdered eggs and macaroni and cheese she’d thrown together on the fly—sat untouched in the picnic box. She was hoping Trevor would forget about it, like she was trying to, but then he pulled it out and spooned a sample into his mouth over her objections.

  Hogan watched for signs of instant food poisoning. His facial muscles twitched and his eyes got a little watery, but he didn’t spit it out. He chewed slowly and swallowed—and then drank down half a bottle of water.

  Hogan’s shoulders hunched forward. “Is it awful?”

  “It’s, ah, memorable.” Trevor laughed and drained the water bottle.

  “We shall never speak of it again.” Hogan hurriedly closed up the container of her culinary shame and stowed it back in the picnic box. “I should have known better than to try to improvise the way you do. Not that I was any skilled cook to begin with. I should probably pay closer attention to your show.”

  “Or take a class when you get home.” He looked past her out the rover windows at the Martian desert beyond.

  His words hit her like a fist to the gut. She was going home to a place where she could take cooking classes and dancing lessons and where she could swim in the ocean and camp in the forest and meet new people at parties. A whole world of new experiences awaited.

  What Trevor had to look forward to was the same faces at the table over the same breakfast. No wonder he worked so hard to make the eating side of survival more interesting.

  “And is all of this, um, haram?” she asked.

  Trevor gave her an odd look, then smirked. “Do you mean, halal?”

  “I guess?”

  Trevor spooned some sabzi frijoles onto her plate. “Well, halal means something is acceptable under traditional Muslim law; it’s like being kosher. Haram means something that’s forbidden.”

  “So, no forbidden meatballs?” Hogan tasted the rice and beans and considered defecting to Dorito Village.

  “Depending on who you ask, just my being here is kind of haram.”

  Hogan forced herself to swallow. “You mean being alone here, with me?”

  To her relief, Trevor laughed. “That’s another matter entirely. But I was talking about Muslims coming to Mars. Some clerics in the old United Arab Emirates issued a fatwa against anyone trying to live here. They said there was no righteous reason to try, or something like that.”

  “Okay?”

  “Because it was considered suicide.”

  “Oh.”

  They sat and ate for a few minutes in silence. Hogan struggled for another question she might ask, one that would be clever and astute and a mood-lightener. But everything that came to mind was about the practical matters of religion, and whether she’d crossed a red line with him already.

  “So let’s just get this out of the way,” Trevor announced with an edge of irritation. “There have been times in my life when I prayed five times a day. I’m not doing that now, but if I did I’d calculate the general direction of Earth in order to face Mecca. I can be a man who prays and who spends time alone in the company of a woman. Plenty of Catholics do the same. I’m not perfect, but I am human.”

  He spooned the last of the rice into his mouth with a whole meatball. After he swallowed, he added, “Someone else, someone who comes later, can figure out religion on Mars. I’m not that guy.”

  “It’s none of my business.”

  “Why not?” Trevor spread his arms wide. “Everything seems to be everybody’s business when it comes to the human residents on Mars. I knowingly took part in a reality show. I expected to lay myself bare, even if I was trying to hide who I was. You know, so I wouldn’t get eliminated on some pretext of a missing skill when the real issue was bigotry.”

  He started packing up the food containers. Hogan rested her fingers on his wrist.

  “I’m not that guy, either,” she said. “Just because I’m curious doesn’t mean I’m judging you.”

  Trevor dropped his hands into his lap. “Right. I’m sorry. I’m just having a hard time right now.”

  “With?”

  Trevor laughed in exasperation. “All of it?”

  He reached into the picnic box and pulled out a new container. “So, how about some dessert? I’ll warn you right now this is something I haven’t attempted before, and I didn’t do a taste test back in the kitchen, like I should have.”

  “I get to be your guinea pig.” Hogan gasped in delight when he lifted the lid to reveal a small tray of milky white gelatin punctuated by colorful squares of yellow, orange, and green. The sweet mosaic looked too good to eat.

  “It’s an improvised broken glass jello.” He spooned some onto a small plate and handed it to Hogan.

  She held it up to the light and marveled at the clean edges of the suspended colors. “From your restaurant?”

  “From my restaurant. And you get to sample the first batch on Mars. I had to make some rather drastic substitutions . . .” Trevor lifted a spoon and nodded for Hogan to go first.

  Hogan took a bite of the jello and instantly made a face. She couldn’t help it. The cloying lemon and orange flavors immediately fell apart in her mouth and were overwhelmed by a weak, chalky goo that she guessed was supposed to be creamy instead.

  “Well, that’s awful.” Trevor spat his mouthful of the stuff into his napkin. “You don’t have to swallow it.”

  “No, I . . .” Hogan tried several times to get the gritty glop down her throat and finally succeeded. Trevor handed her a bottle of water and she drank it down.

  “I figured if you ate that terrible thing I made, I could at least, you know.” She laughed. “Holy hell, Trevor.”

  “Yeah, not every experiment is a success.” He snapped the lid back on the jello and returned the container to the box. “Just like the, well, whatever it was you made.”

  Hogan smacked him playfully on the arm. “I thought we agreed never to speak of that! Please tell me Trent recorded this one for the show.”

  “Yeah, but he didn’t get a shot of that face you made when you tasted it. That was epic.”

  “So, I kissed you earlier.” Hogan’s heart beat fast in her chest. She hadn’t meant to blurt it out like that, and now she couldn’t take it back.

  “Yes, you did.”

  “And maybe I shouldn’t have? I’m in a position of authority here, and I didn’t mean to take advantage of that. At the very least, I should have asked. Or just not done that at all.”

  She was descending into nervous spinning. But then Trevor reached for her hands, and Hogan fell silent.

  “It’s fine. It was more than fine.” He fidgeted with her fingers in his hands. “You caught me by surprise, and I could have handled it better. I could have . . . Well.”

  Trevor leaned forward and kissed her, lightly. His touch was tentative and shy as his hands slid from her wrists up her arms until he was holding her gently by the shoulders. Hogan breathed in the spicy scent of him—an exotic blend of curry and vinegar and all the other herbs she couldn’t name. He smelled like a welcoming hearth, and she had the sensation of being wrapped up in a warm blanket as he pulled her closer.

  His kisses were soft and unhurried and at odds with the impatient heat that was growing inside her. She held herself back, trying to match her movements to his. She ran her fingers through his soft hair as she tasted his lips with her tongue. She stroked his back, tracing the outline of his scapula through his clothing.

  Moving slowly, she settled herself in his lap, straddling him but trying hard not to escalate too quickly. He wrapped his arms around her and held her close, though she was dying for him to run his hands over her body. She wanted him to tear at her jumpsuit. She wanted him to succumb to the same fire she felt growing inside her. She wanted him to push her back onto the floor and suck on her breasts and press his face between her legs. She wanted him to take her.

  Instead, he held her and kissed her, softly and slowly. It was driving her nuts. He did at least tug her hair o
ut of the ponytail elastic.

  “You know I’m leaving soon,” she murmured against his lips, trying to spur him forward.

  “Shhh.” He brushed light fingertips over the curve of her cheek. “We don’t have to talk about that now.”

  “I know but—”

  A long beep from the rover’s communications panel told Hogan that her countdown timer had finished. With a frustrated groan, Hogan lifted herself off of Trevor’s lap and climbed to her feet. She’d given her misbehaving crew a hard timeline for her return, and now she had to head back.

  “Already?” Trevor looked up at her.

  She lingered, tempted to sink back down to him, but the alarm beeped at her again and would continue to do so until she manually turned it off. “I wish . . .”

  “Next time?”

  He packed the remainders of the picnic back into the box as Hogan turned off the alarm and took her place in the driver’s seat. She powered up the rover and slowly turned it around. Trevor settled into the passenger seat as she started the short drive back toward Ares City.

  Within minutes, she spotted the UNSC’s other rover parked at a discreet distance from both Ares City and Progress Base. There weren’t any soil collections, ground water surveys, or other EVAs on the schedule. She grew doubly concerned when she saw that the rover’s windows were practically opaque. Were they running a radiation drill? Or were they in the midst of an actual radiation storm and she’d missed the alert while trying to bone the Ares City chef?

  She steered toward Rover 1 and was about to open to the comms to ask her crew what the hell was going on when Trevor started laughing beside her.

  “What’s so funny?”

  He gestured toward the motionless vehicle. “The windows are all fogged up. Someone had the same idea we did.”

  “What?” As Hogan drove closer, she saw that he was right. That wasn’t radiation shielding in the windows; it was condensation from a lot of heavy breathing.

  “I guess your crew got their issues worked out.” He kept laughing, and Hogan liked the sound of it.

  She steered away from Rover 1 and headed toward the colony habitat.

  Hogan awoke the next morning and felt like she had the worst hangover of her life.

  Her head pounded and her stomach roiled as she made her way to the toilet down the corridor from her quarters. The door was locked. She knocked, politely at first, and then pounded on the door when she felt the contents of her stomach starting to rise.

  “Give me a minute!” Miranda snapped from the other side. She sounded irritated and pained, and like she wasn’t going to be done any time soon.

  Hogan headed for the habitat’s lower level, and the toilet that was next to the bioreactor chamber. Yusuf had spent days down here while he waged his cold war against Grigori and sorted out what residual damage had been done to the spiruliza tanks and food growth. He was triple-checking the water filtration system, too. Hogan made a mental note to recommend Yusuf for a special commendation.

  He’d moved back upstairs the night before. But this toilet door was locked, too. Hogan heard the sounds of retching from within and decided not to harass whoever was on the other side of the door.

  Coffee, she decided. Coffee can fix anything.

  She had elected not to officially reprimand Grigori. Other than accidentally tampering with the environmental controls, he hadn’t technically done anything wrong. From what Hogan had seen, the colony was headed for implosion with or without astronaut interference. And wasn’t Hogan fraternizing with a colonist, too?

  By the time she made it to the kitchen, her stomach was no longer merely upset. She made a lurching dash to the sink and emptied the acidic contents of her stomach into the deep basin. She waited, panting, then rinsed her face and mouth and drank a tall cup of water. She poured herself another cup, leaned back against the kitchen counter and tried to distract herself with thoughts about the dancing she and Trevor had done in this same space.

  “You look awful.” Martin shuffled into the kitchen, looking about as green as Hogan felt.

  “You, too?” Hogan glanced at the cupboard that held her crew’s remaining coffee pods. She didn’t think solid food was a good idea. But she would take a chance on coffee.

  “And Miranda.” Martin drank down some water and riffled through pouches of breakfast foods.

  Hogan couldn’t imagine feeling hungry. Given the amount of contraband alcohol Martin and Miranda had consumed the night before as they celebrated the cessation of hostilities between Yusuf and Grigori and also a merciful close to their own bickering, Martin was probably just hungover.

  The beverage machine beeped at the end of its cycle, and she breathed in the soothing aroma of hot coffee. Her stomach even growled a little. She wrapped her hands around her plastic mug and held it close to her face, as if the proximity could heal her.

  “Probably some stupid bug the colonists brought with them,” she muttered.

  “I doubt it.” Martin added some water and dry milk to a pouch of dry oatmeal and stuck the whole thing in the microwave. “They were in medical isolation for weeks ahead of the competition, and they were subjected to all sorts of shots and other protocols. They’re about as clean as a body can get, germ-wise.”

  Hogan thanked her crew doctor for his expert opinion, but she remained convinced that whatever was making her head spin and her guts percolate was tied to the arrival of the colonists. Or, more likely, to locking lips with one colonist in particular. Or maybe she was just in a bad mood.

  Hogan took a tentative sip of coffee. When her stomach didn’t object, she took a second sip, and then a big gulp. She waited for the caffeine to loosen her headache, and then maybe she’d get her appetite back. Martin’s reconstituted breakfast was starting to smell pretty good.

  “Miranda’s been puking all night. Poor thing.” Martin pulled his hot oatmeal out of the microwave and dug into it with a spork. “She’s asleep now. I’ll keep an eye on her. Make sure she doesn’t get dehydrated.”

  “Have you checked on Grigori or Yusuf?”

  Martin swallowed a mouthful of oats and started making his own coffee. “I had my hands full with Miranda. Are they sick, too?”

  “Maybe.” Hogan started to say more, but her stomach heaved. She dropped her coffee and pushed Martin out of the way as she dashed for the sink. She puked up all the coffee and more stomach acid. Her throat burned as she wiped away the inevitable tears, and then she was retching again.

  When she stood up, Martin handed her a cup of water. “I should have a look at you, too, commander.”

  Hogan took tiny sips of water. She was about to instruct Martin to schedule immediate medical checks for the entire crew, but then he was bent over the sink, too, as the remains of his breakfast lay splattered across the floor.

  Nobody was happy about having the astronauts back at Ares City—except for Trevor, who was back in the kitchen. He had more mouths to feed.

  Once Martin had stopped puking long enough to determine that there was not, in fact, a viral bug being spread among the Hermes 5 crew, the process of elimination led to the culprit being the Progress Base bioreactors or the water filtration system. Chances were good something had grown out of control during the habitat’s accidental sauna conditions, and that something was now making the astronauts sick.

  But it wasn’t a certainty. Naturally, Trevor worried he’d made them all sick. It didn’t matter that there was little chance any of the food had spoiled to the point of making people ill. And even if his catastrophic attempt at broken glass jello had been vile enough to make Hogan sick, that didn’t explain the rest of the astronauts falling ill.

  Logic dictated that it couldn’t have been his food, but the paranoid possibility lingered in his mind. For now, his kitchen wasn’t taking any special requests from the astronaut guests. There wasn’t much beyond tea and crackers that they could stomach.

  He filled thermoses with green tea and carried several boxes of crackers into the recreati
on room where Hogan, Miranda, Martin, and Grigori were sprawled across the floor. Every one of them was pale and sweaty and covered in blankets as they lay propped up on pillows and listlessly watched another episode of Garbage Glamazons—in which Maris discovers a bolt of sequined fabric in a Beverly Hills alley and is determined to transform her find into a red-carpet evening gown, if she can dodge Clive and Julian’s attempts at sabotage.

  Yusuf was back at Progress Base. Melissa, Leah, and Mark had headed over to give him a hand cleaning up the UNSC systems. There hadn’t been any word from them in a couple of hours, and Trevor hoped that was good.

  Trevor motioned to Hogan to keep her place on the floor as he approached with a cup of tea and small plate of crackers.

  “Don’t tax yourself.” He knelt next to her and handed her the tea. He felt her forehead, but she shrugged away from him.

  “I don’t need a babysitter,” she grumbled. But she sipped her tea.

  On the other side of the room, Grigori pushed himself uneasily off the floor and staggered out into the corridor, probably on another run to the nearest bathroom. The colonists had been in residence a mere week and the Ares City recycling systems were already being put to the test. Trevor didn’t envy whoever pulled janitorial duty over the next couple of days.

  “I don’t mind taking care of you.” Trevor offered Hogan a smile.

  She was running a fever, as were the others. Martin seemed confident that whatever this was probably wasn’t contagious, but he was too sick to work in his own medical bay.

  Hogan pushed away from the floor, evading Trevor’s attempts at keeping her still. “I need to use you comms. I need to send a message to my superiors.”

  Before he could stop her, Hogan was on her feet and shuffling out of the room. Trevor wasn’t sure she knew where she was going, much less if she was conscious of what she was doing.

  “Hogan? Hogan!” Trevor trailed after her. He made futile attempts at restraining her and was surprised by the strength of her rebuff. He didn’t want to put his hands on the UNSC commander, not like that, but she wasn’t making it easy.